Introduction
Anna Jameson and the use of picturesque history
Hannah Lawrance and the claims of women's history
Margaret Oliphant and the lessons of eighteenth-century history
Anna Jameson, cultural authority and public moralism
Beautiful and useful arts in Hannah Lawrance's cultural criticism
Marian Evans's cultural criticism in the context of women's public moralism
Eliza Lynn Linton and feminism at the turn of the century
Beatrice Hastings, Rebecca West and women's rights at the turn of the century
Virginia Woolf's common reader and her social criticism
The contexts of conclusions
Bibliography